I fell asleep while burping Dylan last night...or rather this morning. I remember being woken up for his feed, feeding him, burping him in the middle of his bottle, and being woken up again by his cries a couple of hours later. He was still on my shoulder. I suppose you could say that the lack of sleep is finally catching up with me.

Dylan is an exceptionally good baby. But then they all are at this age. He just sleeps and eats. The sleeping is great. The eating every 2 hours isnt so great. Especially when he is a grazer/snacker who takes aaaaaages to finish 2 ounces. As Doug says, it is like watching grass grow. So it takes him an hour to ninety minutes to finish his meal and settle down..then an hour later he is up again for his feed. I find breastfeeding too painful (just as it was with Sasha) so while I try my best to at least put him to the boob a couple of times a day, I tend to pump the milk out and feed him with the bottle. This is also less time consuming as he tends to take breaks at the boob and it drives me crazy when he takes thirty to forty minutes per boob, taking into account snoozes. So in between feeds, I pump, play with Sasha, cook, tidy up, etc. Of course some of this overlaps with feeds so I find myself telling Sasha "Mummy will (whatever) after Mummy feeds Dylan OK" at least 5 times a day.I am pretty sure even Sasha is wondering why this little thing is just continuously eating. But all is good.

When you have a new baby, the first thing people want to know is "How was it?". It being the labour. So for the record, I shall just say that the second time round was worse for me. Not traumatic, but pretty much reaffirms my decision to stop procreating. I put this down to the docs expecting it to take less time than my first labour, which was 14 hours. So they didn't provide sufficient medication during the epidural. I am sure if my cervix had cooperated and allowed me to push after 7 hours of labour, all would have been well. But it didn't, and after 8 hours, the medication wore off and by then I was fully dilated and absolutely screaming for the epidural top up. I remember Doug asking me a few times if I was OK...and I remember telling him that I am about to push a freaking bowling ball out my vagina so I was NOT OK. He also kept saying "How exciting...we are about to have a baby" to which I responded I KNOW ALREADY. Then he cracked some jokes...and all I could think through the haze of pain was "I am pretty sure Jerry Seinfeld must have been bitch slapped by his wife during her labour." I remember the anaesthesiologist coming into the room, doing something, and asking if I still felt pain. I grunted yes, to which she said "OK, now we are putting in the real medication." At that point I do recall thinking "What the fuck, if she just gave me a placebo I am going to sue her bloody ass". The drugs finally worked. I was allowed to sleep until noon, then the docs informed me that I had to push as the baby was coming, but if I couldn't do it then I would have to go under the scalpel. At that point I was so drugged up that I could not feel anything down there but I was not about to give up so I just said I could push. And 15 minutes later, a baby popped out. To be perfectly honest, I was so wrapped up in the pain management that I had totally forgotten that the end result was a baby..I remember looking at Dylan on the bed and thinking..."Ah yes, so that's why we are here." And 24 hours later, we were home.

We spent yesterday afternoon getting an emergency passport for Dylan. We are leaving for Amsterdam and Milan in 3 weeks. My main worry was that we would not be able to get a passport because we have not been issued his birth certificate, and we really don't have any form of ID for him. Luckily for us it was less painful than we thought and all that we needed to get from the City Clerk was a travel letter which details his registration of birth, which I did online a week ago. So, with that we are able to get a 6 month passport which will be renewed once he gets his birth certificate. What a relief because the tickets have been bought and our meetings scheduled. We even booked a tour to see the Last Supper in Milan on the day we arrive. Apparently, since the Da Vincci Code, this is an extremely popular site. Great marketing at no cost to the Vatican.

Introducing Dylan Jedi

The view of the city from my hospital room. Dylan was born on a glorious day. So while I was writhing in pain waiting for the damn epidural top-up, the rest of the world must have been at the beach.


Well worth the pain


He sprayed the room within seconds of this picture being taken


With Daddy


With his big sister





Sash just adores her Baby Dylan. Between bouts of regression and attention seeking, there are priceless moments of tenderness. We are very proud of our little troopers..

Dylan Jedi

Dylan Jedi arrived at 12.25pm on 15th August after 12...read it...12 freaking hours of labour. He is 8.85 pounds and 20 inches. We adore him already.

Still preggers

Yup, am still pregnant. D, Sash and the parental unit are spending the afternoon on Centre Island, which is a short ferry ride away from Downtown. I decided to take some quiet time at home because 1) I am not about to have my water break in a kiddie amusement park. Too cliche. And 2) I needed to run some errands like returning an imminently overdue library book. I have also vacuumed one room, defrosted the salmon for tonight's dinner and googled "labor contractions" and "difference between water breaking and peeing" to refresh myself. Hopefully I will be able to induce labor with my googling efforts.

This morning I received a call from L asking me if I had ever administered an injection. I jokingly explained to her that I am not a "real" Dr. I would however happily draft a contract for her. She explained that she needed to get a shot in her tummy to initiate ovulation (she is on IVF treatment) and she didn't have the guts to do it herself. I told her that I have no qualms about acting as injector in view of fact that it is the injectee that takes on brunt of pain, and I was fairly sure I could do it because I watched alot of Greys Anatomy. So I waddled over to hers in my PJ's, washed my hands, read the instructions, and injected whatever hormone into her tummy. Hey, what are neighbours for.

Yup, still fat..

Dagnabbit, I am still pregers!! When will this end?? D keeps telling the bump to "head towards the light" and even Sash is asking me if I am "ouchie". Yes darling, Mummy ouchie and Mummy wants ouchie OUT!! If D ask's me one more time if tonight is the night, I will slap him.

I am still pregnant. Yesterday's check-up confirms that I am 2cm dilated, and that the baby's head is in position. She expects that I should deliver befre my next appointment on Thursday. I sure hope so cause the baby CANNOT grow anymore without my busting my tummy and the only way is OUT!

My parents arrived on Wednesday and Sasha is having an absolute field day with her Tote and Net . They have been jet lagged so we have not done much other than showing them the neighbourhood. We checked out the ROM and had Sushi in Yorkville this afternoon while Sasha was at daycare. As we have only ever visited the ROM with Sash, D and I kept looking around for her, thinking that we had left her behind at one of the exhibits. Tomorrow I think we will be taking in an art gallery just North of Toronto. Depends on how much sleep they get after watching the Olympic coverage.

We have had a rather productive day. This morning we heard from the editor of our book and it is a go ahead as the peer reviews were not altogether scathing. We have a month to finish up the requested amendments and they hope to publish it in January and really start selling it in September 09. We plan to dedicate it to Sasha and Dylan as a way to make up for the time it took away from them. I remember last Christmas was spent practically force feeding Dora DVDs down Sash's throat to give us time to meet the editor's deadline. Boy did we feel guilty..

After the conference call, we headed out to the shops to stock up on halal meats and veggies before my parents arrive on Wednesday. Did you know that Walmart stocks the stuff?? I swear, I am such a convert and so is D. We feel ever so rebellious as we know the neighbours are dead set against big box shops (we live among the eco-warrior set), and ever so good about saving money. Although admittedly, we do stock up on DVDs so technically we are spending more money than during a normal food run. But they also sell my new fave drink (!!) so all is not lost.



My Italian is non-existent, unless you count Ciao Ciao, Penne Arrabiatta, and Allora, but I am pretty sure aranciata means orange sparkling heaven in a can. It is divine! When I was preggers with Sash I was addicted to Coke Light...so addicted that it is rather surprising that Sash came out normal. Lets hope Dylan doesn't come out orange hued...

We also cleaned the basement, moved the desk and train set aside and set up the futon for them. Sasha thinks it is her new play area so my Mum may have to fight her for the bed. We are I suppose as ready as we will ever be for their visit.